I've taken a hiatus from this category for a while. Working on other projects.
Anywho, I'm not a newbie, but I'm a long ways from being a seasoned ol hand at screenwriting. After reading a number of scripts, I've found that I'm attracted to the flick: Collateral, w/ Jamie Foxx. I can't really pin-point it. Is Collateral character or plot driven or a combination of both? I'm also wondering if anyone else has experienced the same fascination w/ this story/film.
All comments welcome.
This has always really been a false dichotomy.
Stories are "driven" by the needs and choices of the characters who populate them.
So what exactly then is a "plot-driven" story? Or a "character-driven" story?
What exactly is doing the driving in either case?
I mean I think we both know exactly what people "mean" when they talk about these things.
On the one hand they're talking about action or genre type films with car chases and killer plants and things going boom and on the other hand about "serious dramas" with people sitting next to the bedsides of other people who have serious medical conditions or who've been abused by other people, often in their own families.
And what I'm saying is that there isn't the slightest bit of difference between these two kinds of movies in terms of "plottiness" and "charactery-ness."
It's simply that different stories pose different problems.
You can almost think of a story like the working out of a kind of math problem. Character X possesses has this aspect A but also this aspect B and he's going to have to face problem Z -- and this problem is going to bring those two qualities or aspects into opposition.
And depending upon the choices he makes he's either going to navigate the path between these two aspects and solve problem Z or fail to do so.
You have to choose between love and duty.
You have to choose between holding onto your childhood or becoming a man.
You hold onto your hate or let go of it.
You have to choose a course of vengeance or of justice.
You have to decide whether to be a civilized person or a savage.
And the working out of any particular story problem is the plot of the story. Every story has got one.
It's true that, depending on the nature of the story, there are some stories that are more "plotty" than other stories - but there are genre and action movies with exceptionally simply plots (think of something like Duel) and there are what are certainly considered to be "character" movies that have incredibly complicated and byzantine plots.
So is it that "plot driven" movies are driven by things that come from "outside" of a character - like earthquakes or giant squids, as opposed to "character-driven" which are driven by things that come from "within" -- like the need to win the heart of some chick?
No.
Because the real beginning of any story is not an earthquake or a giant squid but a "character who has a need" -- whether it's saving himself, or somebody else, or the world, or winning some chick's heart -- and in the process that brings into play those conflicting aspects -- "What is he now?" vs. "What does he need to become?" -- that the plot and the events of the story will inevitably bring into view and allow to play out through the mechanisms of plot.
So every story, so far as I can see, is character driven, and every story is plot driven -- because, so far as I can see, plot and character are simply irreducible aspects of any story.
Without both in place doing what they're supposed to be doing, you simply don't have a story at all.
NMS
